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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2251 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 5, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the central text of the Baháʼí. Still a bunch of other stuff to go through.

I'm most of the way through Kenneth Anger's legendary Hollywood Babylon, a gossip page of ancient scandals from sober l silent era to WW2 Hollywood. The Fatty Arbuckle rape trial, William Randolph Hearst shooting a film producer on his yacht, various homosexual orgies, Conde Nast being a person rather than a company. It's amazing.

I can't recommend it enough. It's raising so many questions for me, despite the fact that I'm aware (from having previously listened to the You Must Remember This podcast series dismissing Anger as inaccurate) that it's wildly inflated. Anger writes in such a fun way, and the material is so fascinating, and I'm filled with new questions about morals and society. A masterpiece.

It's in lazy audiobook form so I can rest my eyes before sleep, but I've started the Aubrey/Maturin series (Master and Commander). I enjoy stories set in the Age of Sail/Napoleonic era and it hasn't disappointed so far with lots of detail about how the Royal Navy operated during that period. I've also got the Hornblower series lined up after that (I enjoyed the tv film series), but if I get sick of naval I could always switch to Sharpe.

Currently starting Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization

Not sure where I heard about this book, but it was fairly recently. I burn through these lightly-technical nonfiction books really quickly. Similar books that I have read in the past few years include Energy: A Human History (Rhodes), Structures (Gordon), The Box (Levinson), Living on the Grid (Thompson)

The author’s blog was linked on the subreddit recently.

Currently reading Prit Buttar's two-part history of the siege of Leningrad. I now have many tragic anecdotes about people starving to death. Also have several very funny anecdotes about people starving to death.

Anything interesting in there?

Too early to tell. So far it looks like a law-book, which is not the most interesting genre. It's also very Arabic.

I'm honestly reading it because I saw the phrase "excellence in all things" in the video game War Wind's manual, which is apparently also the name of a book of Baháʼí excerpts (no actual relation seems likely).

About two-thirds of the way through The Unbearable Lightness of Being. When it comes to marital fidelity, this makes the Czechs sound worse than the French.

Yesterday I read a passage that I've been thinking about all day, may be good fodder for a top-level post.

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